Garden inspiration

I’ve been inspired, the sun, the mass of seedlings on my coffee table, the bulbs that have arrived by post, this months edition of Gardens Illustrated and the Landscape Man.

The Wildside nursery gardens on the The Landscape Man (channel 4) were amazing, totally inspirational, even if the owners were bonkers! If I have that much energy at their age I’m sure my family will kill me! The natural style of planting, the drifts of flowers, use of grasses and bulbs was really inspirational. My back garden is really very small, no more than a postage stamp but to see these great swathes of plants working together was fantastic.

For myself, it would be impossible to attempt something like this, but I will look at how I make my planting more naturalistic and go from there.

What I’ve now realised is that the garden is an evolution and is not static. That’s what’s amazing, if I plant a couple of herbaceous perennials or some rhizomous plants they will collanise. If birds drop seeds they will collanise and I will have weeds or different plants and nature will take its course.

I’m going to see where this naturalistic style can take me and take my inspiration from anywhere I happen to be, a park, the side of the motorway, an urban street and see what happens. Wish me luck!

If you want to see some of the pics of the garden visit channel4.com/landscape man

The big move to Bristol

Writing Workshop #20 set by sleep is for the weak. The subject is moving house.

In 2004 myself and my boyfriend of a year and I decided to move from London to Bristol. The primary reason for the move was that my OH received a job offer that he was interested in and the thought of a long distance relationship at that stage of our lives seemed ridiculous. The decision to move was an opportunity for our relationship to grow in a way that it would have taken a long time to do if we stayed in London. My London life was hectic and full of friends and family, time to ourselves was limited. Moving to Bristol definitely changed that!

The actual move to Bristol took a while, we stayed with my OHs Brother who lives here. It took 5 months to move into the house, a lovely mid-terrace Victorian house in a fantastic location a few minutes walk to a butcher, delicatessen and coffee shop. You can tell where my priorities lie!

I left behind most of my family, most of my friends and a good career. It was petrifying. After the initial excitement the realisation dawned, I understood what I had left. It’s taken about 5 years to build up a few good friends here and we learnt who our true friends are from London and what is important to us. The career I am still working on, watch this space!

Myself and OH combined our resources and ended up getting married nearly 4 years ago. If I hadn’t of made the move .. who knows. All I do know is that I definitely made the right decision. I do think about moving back, but I don’t think I could stand the traffic and commuting and I like my solitude now!

Freecycling family

My parents in law moved into our area a couple of weeks ago and I helped them out that day, doing quite a bit of cleaning, putting away etc. I noticed for the first time that they didn’t have a proper desk chair and as we mainly use our laptops on the dining room table I’ve been meaning to freecycle ours as its gathering dust in the spare room.

I offered it to them, but as they are downsizing my mother in law said that I would have to take one of their chairs home – they are operating a one in one out policy, which I empathise with! I’m trying to clear out clutter myself not collect it but I know my father in law was keen so I agreed.

Now, I am the lucky owner of an old Lloyd Loom chair that needs a bit of TLC and re-vamping. Who knows where it will end up in the house as we don’t have much spare room but… I’m sure I’ll find a use for it, it’s a lot prettier than the Ikea office chair!

ps in the picture is a nice sheepskin throw - that was mine and didnt come with the chair!

pps this is the last housey blog for a short while - i think ive been overdoing it!

Reclamation yards

Does anyone else love trawling round reclamation yards? So many ideas.. so little time.
I don't always find the bargains though and I lost some sleep recently over the table in the picture. I very nearly bought it but decided to sleep on it and realised in the cold light of day it was probably a bit big as a coffee table for our lounge plus it was quite a bit of money (understatement).
What I love about it is the legs are remaniscent of 1950s design but with the wood on the top it looks like old floorbards which gives it a georgian/victorian edge. Really clever and would have looked great in our Victorian house with a mixture of modern and old furniture.
I have been thinking that I can probably get someone to make some similar legs and a frame and I just need some extra wide floorboards - watch this space!

Our new fireplace...

As you may know, i'm a bit of an ebay queen.... which to be honest has probably saved my marriage! I'm constantly falling in love with things in shops and magazines then trying to recreate them for myself in a much more um thrifty fastion!
Recently, we had a quote for our difficult fireplace in the lounge (victorian replaced by 1930s). The quote was for nearly £1,000 for slate hearth, surround and fitting. I nearly died - literally! The fantastic fireplaces I had been looking at were around £1k but we didn't want to go that far as to be honest if we took off the mantle the likelihood of the plaster falling off the wall was quite high - don't you just love Victorian houses!!
Well I trawled ebay and found a hearth and surround that would work with some expert fixing and tweaking (OH!) We are thrilled with the result - it needs a bit of final tweaking but at the end of the day weve spent no more than £150 so we are quids in!